Anciently on new year’s day the Romans were accustomed to carry small
presents, as new year’s gifts, to the senators, under whose protection
they were severally placed. In the reigns of the emperors, they flocked
in such numbers with valuable ones, that various decrees were made to
abolish the custom; though it always continued among that people. The
Romans who settled in Britain, or the families connected with them by
marriage, introduced these new year’s gifts among our forefathers, who
got the habit of making presents, even to the magistrates. Some of the
fathers of the church wrote against them, as fraught with the greatest
abuses, and the magistrates were forced to relinquish them. Besides the
well-known anecdote of sir Thomas More, when lord chancellor,[5] many
instances might be adduced from old records, of giving a pair of gloves,
some with “linings,” and others without. Probably from thence has been
derived the fashion of giving a pair of gloves upon particular
occasions, as at marriages, funerals, &c. New year’s gifts continue to
be received and given by all ranks of people, to commemorate the sun’s
return, and the prospect of spring, when the gifts of nature are shared
by all. Friends present some small tokens of esteem to each
other--husbands to their wives, and parents to their children. The
custom keeps up a cheerful and friendly intercourse among acquaintance,
and leads to that good-humour and mirth so necessary to the spirits in
this dreary season. Chandlers send as presents to their customers large
mould candles; grocers give raisins, to make a Christmas pudding, or a
pack of cards, to assist in spending agreeably the long evenings. In
barbers’ shops “thrift-box,” as it is called, is put by the apprentice
boys against the wall, and every customer, according to his inclination,
puts something in. Poor children, and old infirm persons, beg, at the
doors of the charitable, a small pittance, which, though collected in
small sums, yet, when put together, forms to them a little treasure; so
that every heart, in all situations of life, beats with joy at the
nativity of his Saviour.
The _Hagman Heigh_ is an old custom observed in Yorkshire on new year’s
eve, as appertaining to the season. The keeper of the pinfold goes round
the town, attended by a rabble at his heels, and knocking at certain
doors, sings a barbarous song, beginning with--
“Tonight it is the new year’s night, to-morrow is the day;
We are come about for our right and for our ray,
As we us’d to do in old king Henry’s day:
Sing, fellows, sing, _Hagman Heigh_,” &c.
The song always concludes with “wishing a merry Christmas and a happy
new year.” When wood was chiefly used as fuel, in heating ovens at
Christmas, this was the most appropriate season for the _hagman_, or
wood-cutter, to remind his customers of his services, and to solicit
alms. The word _hag_ is still used in Yorkshire, to signify a wood. The
“hagg” opposite to Easby formerly belonged to the abbey, to supply them
with fuel. Hagman may be a name compounded from it. Some derive it from
the Greek Αγιαμηνη, the holy month, when the festivals of the church for
our Saviour’s birth were celebrated. Formerly, on the last day of the
year, the monks and friars used to make a plentiful harvest, by begging
from door to door, and reciting a kind of carol, at the end of every
stave of which they introduced the words “agia mene,” alluding to the
birth of Christ. A very different interpretation, however, was given to
it by one John Dixon, a Scotch presbyterian minister, when holding forth
against this custom in one of his sermons at Kelso. “Sirs, do you know
what the _hagman_ signifies? It is the devil to be in the house; that is
the meaning of its Hebrew original.”[6]
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